&lt;p&gt;Some good questions &lt;a href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/01/31/whatIfFlashWereAnOpenStand.html"&gt;from Dave Winer regarding Apple, Adobe, and Flash&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;What if Apple were trying to erase something that&amp;#8217;s not company-owned? Either a formal or de facto standard? Further, what if their alternative were something that was locked-down and owned by a company? Further, what if the company was Apple?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;d say that&amp;#8217;d be a different ball of wax entirely. It would depend, for one thing, on the specific open / de facto standard technology.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But as for open &lt;em&gt;web&lt;/em&gt; standards, the evidence &amp;#8212; actions and shipping code, not just words &amp;#8212; strongly indicate that Apple is a major proponent of them. Apple didn&amp;#8217;t have to release WebKit as an open source project &amp;#8212; they could have kept their extensions atop the LGPL-licensed WebCore private.&lt;sup id="fnr1-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn1-2010-02-01"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; They&amp;#8217;ve re-written WebKit&amp;#8217;s JavaScript engine from scratch at least twice, and released it all as open source. (Apple has also been aggressive about releasing its advanced non-web developer technology, &lt;a href="http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Conceptual/Blocks/Articles/00_Introduction.html"&gt;like blocks and LLVM&lt;/a&gt;, as liberally-licensed open source.) All of Apple&amp;#8217;s top competitors in the mobile space have either already adopted WebKit or soon will: Android, WebOS, even BlackBerry. Members of Apple&amp;#8217;s WebKit team have been helping drive HTML5 since its inception. In short, I&amp;#8217;d say Apple likes its technology open and its products closed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;E.g., it makes all the difference in the world that Apple is pushing H.264 rather than, say, QuickTime as the way forward for embedded web video.&lt;sup id="fnr2-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn2-2010-02-01"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I do understand &lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/31/ipad-review-comments-naughton"&gt;the fear&lt;/a&gt;. It&amp;#8217;s indisputable that Apple seeks large amounts of control over its products. So it&amp;#8217;s a reasonable question to ask whether Apple sees the web itself, which they have no control over, as a problem. I don&amp;#8217;t think that&amp;#8217;s the case at all, though. The web, as a whole, is arguably the single most entrenched computer technology ever created. So where Apple seeks control with regard to the web is in the technology to render it &amp;#8212; HTML, CSS, JavaScript. No one can tell them what to do with WebKit; they wait for no one to shape and bend WebKit to suit their needs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My feeling is not that Apple seeks total control over all content and software in iPhone OS. I&amp;#8217;d say it&amp;#8217;s more like they&amp;#8217;re providing two well-defined, nice, neat, easily-understood extremes: the totally controlled native Cocoa Touch, and the totally open web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Winer ends with a suggestion for Adobe:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe might want to consider, right now, very quickly, giving Flash to the public domain. Disclaim all patents, open source all code, etc etc. That would throw the ball squarely back into Apple&amp;#8217;s court and would frame the question right now in its most stark terms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;d be an interesting move, and it would certainly shake things up. But what if the source code to Flash Player is &amp;#8212; as many would wager &amp;#8212; a huge steaming pile of convoluted C++ horseshit? It&amp;#8217;s sort of like what if Microsoft open-sourced the Internet Explorer rendering engine. It&amp;#8217;s not like anyone who is now using WebKit or Gecko would switch to that just because it was opened &amp;#8212; or that WebKit, Mozilla, and Opera would suddenly be obligated to or even interested in adopting IE-specific web features.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem for Flash is just like the problem for IE &amp;#8212; the web has already moved on.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="footnotes"&gt; &lt;hr /&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li id="fn1-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;An earlier version of this article stated that the entirety of WebKit is BSD-licensed. That&amp;#8217;s wrong; the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML"&gt;KHTML library&lt;/a&gt; that Apple started with is LGPL-licensed, and so therefore is the WebCore component in WebKit. We regret the error.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr1-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li id="fn2-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;H.264 is an open standard, but admittedly and unfortunately &lt;a href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/"&gt;not a free standard&lt;/a&gt;, hence Mozilla&amp;#8217;s opposition to it. My point here is simply that H.264 is not owned by Apple or any other single company.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr2-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Robert Scoble &lt;a href="http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/30/can-flash-be-saved/"&gt;has a good analogy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like &lt;a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/apples_ipad_--_a_broken_link.html"&gt;Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail&lt;/a&gt; because of its own set of broken links.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Regarding those blue boxes that indicate embedded Flash content in MobileSafari, think of it this way: Who can make them go away?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adobe can&amp;#8217;t. They can&amp;#8217;t put Flash Player on iPhone OS on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apple could, &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash"&gt;but they won&amp;#8217;t&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users could make Apple change its mind by refusing to buy iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads because they don&amp;#8217;t support Flash. That does not seem to be happening. In fact, iPhone sales are accelerating.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Web site producers could do it, by replacing or providing an alternative to the Flash content on their sites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/29/porno-flash"&gt;initial reaction to the iPad&lt;/a&gt; seems to be geared toward #3 &amp;#8212; emphasizing publicly that iPhone OS devices are not capable of rendering the (admittedly, substantial amounts of) Flash content on the web today. Good luck with that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s fear, of course, is that #4 is what will happen. And with good reason, since I think it&amp;#8217;s fair to say that we&amp;#8217;re seeing this happen already. Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow &lt;a href="http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703"&gt;made his little poster&lt;/a&gt; showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they&amp;#8217;re missing anything because, well, they&amp;#8217;re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigiphoto/4314276957/"&gt;Kendall Helmstetter Gelner put together this version&lt;/a&gt; of Brimelow&amp;#8217;s chart using actual screenshots from MobileSafari, the App Store, and native iPhone apps. The only two blue boxes left: FarmVille and Hulu.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The explanation is simple. Web site producers tend to be practical. Those that use Flash do so not because they&amp;#8217;re Flash proponents, but because Flash is easy and ubiquitous. Few technologies get to 100 percent market penetration; Flash came remarkably close. A few years ago you could say that, effectively, Flash was everywhere. It made total sense for sites like YouTube and Hulu to go with Flash.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There&amp;#8217;s a big difference between &amp;#8220;everywhere&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;almost everywhere&amp;#8221;. Adobe&amp;#8217;s own statistics on Flash&amp;#8217;s market penetration &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html"&gt;claim 99 percent penetration&lt;/a&gt; as of last month. That&amp;#8217;s because, according to their &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/"&gt;survey methodology&lt;/a&gt;, they&amp;#8217;re only counting &amp;#8220;PCs&amp;#8221; &amp;#8212; which ignores the entire sort of devices which have brought about this debate. Adobe is arguing that Flash is installed on 99 percent of all web browsers that support Flash, not 99 percent of all web browsers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That&amp;#8217;s no longer true, and Adobe&amp;#8217;s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What&amp;#8217;s Hulu going to do? Sit there and wait? Whine about the blue boxes? Or do the practical thing and write software that delivers video to iPhone OS? The answer is obvious. Hulu doesn&amp;#8217;t care about what&amp;#8217;s good for Adobe. They care about what&amp;#8217;s good for Hulu. Hulu isn&amp;#8217;t a &lt;em&gt;Flash&lt;/em&gt; site, it&amp;#8217;s a &lt;em&gt;video&lt;/em&gt; site. Developers go where the users are.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ashlee Vance, reporting for the NYT on HP&amp;#8217;s failure in the mobile market:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sales of HP&amp;#8217;s hand-held products, including its iPaq smartphone, dropped to $25 million in the quarter, down from $57 million in the same period last year. Apple, by contrast, had sales of $5.6 billion for iPhones and related products during its most recent quarter.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;HP’s anemic performance in the smartphone market has left analysts perplexed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;There&amp;#8217;s nothing perplexing about it. HP doesn&amp;#8217;t have their own mobile OS. Instead they banked on Windows Mobile, and Windows Mobile stinks.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘HP&amp;#8217;s Failure in Mobile Phones’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/hp-mobile"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Now that the whole thing has been posted to YouTube, you can watch from Flash-less devices such as your iPhone or Apple TV, or even sans Flash on your Mac if you&amp;#8217;ve signed up for &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/html5"&gt;YouTube&amp;#8217;s HTML5 beta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘YouTube Version of Your Humble Narrator&amp;#8217;s Macworld Feature Presentation’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/youtube-mwsf-2010"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Check out the side-by-side comparison late in the video of the time it takes to launch 10 apps simultaneously from an SSD versus a traditional hard disk.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘SSDs and the MacBook Pro’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/ssd-mbp"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#8217;ll never guess who&amp;#8217;s leading the charges against them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘EU Opens Antitrust Investigation Into Google ’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/eu"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Shaun Inman&amp;#8217;s upcoming iPhone platform game. You collect power-ups not to upgrade your character but to upgrade the &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt;. Looks glorious.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Mimeo and the Kleptopus King’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/mimeo"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Nice interview, and if you haven&amp;#8217;t checked out &lt;a href="http://www.riverfold.com/software/clipstart/"&gt;Clipstart&lt;/a&gt;, you should. (Click the &amp;#8220;Download MOV file&amp;#8221; link to get a nice big H.264 version right in Safari.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Merlin Mann Interviews Clipstart Developer Manton Reece at Macworld’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/merlin-manton"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Paraphrased transcript from Dan Frommer:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose. The table each of you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, yet Apple&amp;#8217;s revenue last year was $40 billion. I think any other company that could say that is an oil company.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you want to understand Apple Inc., listen to Tim Cook.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Tim Cook Q&amp;amp;A Session at Goldman Sachs Conference’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/cook-goldman"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;So great.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Justin Van Genderen&amp;#8217;s Minimalist Star Wars Tourism Posters’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/genderen"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;From the department of tags I never expected to create for DF posts: &amp;#8220;Sexy Apps&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Daisy Mae&amp;#8217; Game Pulled From the App Store; a Few Days Later, It&amp;#8217;s Back In’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/daisy-mae"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;My list of the top ten issues facing Apple, presented at Macworld Expo earlier this month. Thanks to everyone who was there &amp;#8212; it was a great audience.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Your Humble Narrator&amp;#8217;s Presentation From Macworld 2010’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/macworld-presentation"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://curvedwhite.com/post/405144449/minimalist-movie-posters-by-eduardo-prox"&gt;Via Curved White&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Minimalist Movie Posters By Eduardo Pox’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/poxsters"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;More information from Mike Chambers on how the Flash Player plugin for Android works with regard to scrolling. The key is that you double-tap to zoom the Flash element to full screen.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Mike Chambers on Scrolling With Flash Content on Touch Devices’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/chambers-scrolling"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Stream your movies, pictures, and music to your Xbox or PS3 with Rivet. Use coupon DARINGFIRE2010 to receive a 25% discount (this week only).&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/9363515820"&gt;Wil Shipley on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, presumably in response to &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/19/coldeway"&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (and where by &amp;#8220;other platforms&amp;#8221;, Shipley apparently means &amp;#8220;Microsoft Windows&amp;#8221;):&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hmm, @gruber ignores that Flash on other platforms can and does use hardware H.264 decoding, but Apple won’t give Adobe access.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I didn&amp;#8217;t mention the issue yesterday, no, but I wrote &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash#performance"&gt;a whole section about it in this piece&lt;/a&gt; a few weeks ago, and I specifically linked to Adobe&amp;#8217;s own &lt;a href="http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/#FAQ"&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://theflashblog.com/?p=1641"&gt;weblog entry&lt;/a&gt; on the issue.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think the issue is a red herring, spin from Adobe intended to share the blame for Flash&amp;#8217;s Mac OS X performance with Apple. First, Flash performance gripes are not limited to H.264 video playback. &lt;em&gt;Everything&lt;/em&gt; Flash Player does is slower on Mac OS X than Windows. What&amp;#8217;s Adobe&amp;#8217;s excuse for Flash&amp;#8217;s performance on non-H.264 video?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Second, even Apple&amp;#8217;s own &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html"&gt;QuickTime on Snow Leopard&lt;/a&gt; only &lt;a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/10/snow-leopard-h-264-hardware-acceleration-and-opencl-requirements/"&gt;makes use of H.264 hardware acceleration with a single graphics card&lt;/a&gt;: the Nvidia 9400M. If you don&amp;#8217;t have that graphics card in your Mac, you don&amp;#8217;t get H.264 hardware acceleration, period. That card is used across the board in current MacBooks and Mac Minis, but there are an awful lot of older Macs in use &amp;#8212; a majority I&amp;#8217;d wager &amp;#8212; which don&amp;#8217;t have that card. It&amp;#8217;s also not present in current brand-new Mac Pros and most iMacs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Third, no one is complaining about the lack of hardware acceleration for other video playback software on Mac OS X, like &lt;a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html"&gt;VLC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://code.google.com/p/movist/"&gt;Movist&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://perian.org/"&gt;Perian&lt;/a&gt;, or even (as mentioned in the previous paragraph) QuickTime itself on machines without the Nvidia 9400M. Even if we concede the point that Flash Player&amp;#8217;s lack of access to H.264 hardware acceleration on Mac OS X inherently blocks it from matching its H.264 playback performance on Windows, I fail to understand how that blocks it from matching the performance of other video playback software on Mac OS X itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Fourth, hardware accelerated H.264 support is &lt;a href="http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.pdf"&gt;a new feature in the as-yet-unreleased Flash Player 10.1&lt;/a&gt;. It in no way explains the performance difference in Flash Player 10.0 on Mac OS X and Windows.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, does anyone really think it would be a good idea for web content plugins to have direct access to graphics card hardware? Is it absurd to think that it&amp;#8217;s a reasonable OS design to limit &lt;em&gt;plugins&lt;/em&gt; to higher-level APIs? Should Flash Player be a kernel extension, so that it can ensure it gets plenty of CPU cycles and have direct access to whatever hardware it wants?&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/"&gt;Macworld Expo&lt;/a&gt; 2010 kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco. Is it going to fly without Apple? I don&amp;#8217;t know. I don&amp;#8217;t think anyone does yet. Apple&amp;#8217;s traditional presence at Macworld was so large, both figuratively (with the attention paid to their keynote address) and literally (with their massive booth on the show floor), that their absence has effectively rendered Macworld a new event. I think it&amp;#8217;s smart that IDG moved the date back a month; anything they could do to emphasize that it&amp;#8217;s going to be new and different this year can only help. (I have no idea if it was feasible, but if it had been, I&amp;#8217;d have advised moving the show across the street to Moscone West, just to make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; different, too.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple&amp;#8217;s absence will be felt in two ways. First, the lack of an Apple keynote address has significantly diminished the amount of media attention. That was inevitable. But it wasn&amp;#8217;t really Macworld Expo, the trade show and conference, that was garnering that attention. It was Apple itself. Apple&amp;#8217;s keynotes really didn&amp;#8217;t have much at all to do with the exhibit floor or conference sessions. I suppose there were some number of attendees who considered attending the keynote as a major reason to buy a conference pass, but percentage-wise only a small number of attendees could ever see the keynotes in person. It&amp;#8217;s not like Apple hasn&amp;#8217;t given us much to talk about recently &amp;#8212; hello, iPad &amp;#8212; it just wasn&amp;#8217;t announced at Macworld itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The more worrisome factor for me is Apple&amp;#8217;s absence from the show floor. They had a huge booth in a prominent spot and they drew people in. The role they played on the show floor is very much analogous, I think, to the role played by a big department store like Macy&amp;#8217;s or Nordstrom at a shopping mall.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;To me, though, the reason to walk the show floor has always been about the small companies &amp;#8212; often the &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; small ones. The ones where the employees manning the booth are the engineers and designers who made the product they&amp;#8217;re promoting. I&amp;#8217;ve been to a bunch of Macworld Expos and I never once failed to discover at least one fascinating product by walking the show floor. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In terms of what&amp;#8217;s going on other than the trade show, I&amp;#8217;ve long thought that the inordinate amount of front-loaded attention paid to Apple&amp;#8217;s keynote address drew attention away from the fact that Macworld has turned into a large and successful conference, with tracks spanning everything from programming to graphic design.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Nothing could replace a Steve Jobs keynote address, so, wisely, they&amp;#8217;re not trying. Instead, Macworld has scheduled a &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/fp"&gt;bunch of featured speakers&lt;/a&gt; throughout the week, including David Pogue, Kevin Smith (yes, &lt;a href="http://www.viewaskew.com/"&gt;that Kevin Smith&lt;/a&gt;), Leo Laporte, and, yours truly. &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/sessions?s=QSHOWA0005AZ"&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll be speaking Friday at 4:30pm&lt;/a&gt;, where I&amp;#8217;ll share the secret recipes for my award-winning cupcakes and melt-in-your-mouth croissants.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(DF readers: you can register for the show using the discount code &amp;#8220;GRUBER&amp;#8221; to get a &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; expo pass that will get you into my talk (and the show floor, and the other feature presentations). That code is also good for a 20 percent discount on any of the conferences. Just keep in mind that with that code, it&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;totally free&lt;/em&gt; to come see my talk and the other feature presentations.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The bottom line for me is that the potential is there for Macworld to remain a great show. Imagine if there&amp;#8217;d never been a Macworld Expo before, and that this was the first year. It wouldn&amp;#8217;t be surprising that Apple declined to participate. But is there demand for a days-long nerdfest for Mac and iPhone professionals and aficionados? I say yes.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Great story.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Find My iPhone&amp;#8217; Rescues Two Stolen Phones at Busch Gardens’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/find-my-iphone"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Philip Elmer-DeWitt, relaying information from unnamed attendees at today&amp;#8217;s Apple shareholders meeting:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another shareholder then asked a longwinded Q about what Apple/Jobs fears. &amp;#8220;What keeps you awake at night?&amp;#8221; … Jobs deadpans: &amp;#8220;Shareholders meetings.&amp;#8221; Audience erupts in laughter.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Inside Apple&amp;#8217;s Shareholders Meeting’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/jobs-shareholders"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Tim Berners-Lee:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I agree with the WG chairs that these items &amp;#8212; data and canvas &amp;#8212; are reasonable areas of work for the group. It is appropriate for the group to publish documents in this area.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Tim Berners-Lee Rejects Adobe&amp;#8217;s HTML5 Procedural Arguments’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/tbl"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Including great families like DIN and Meta. Even better, they &lt;a href="http://blog.typekit.com/2010/02/23/buy-fonts-at-fontshop-host-them-on-typekit/"&gt;work with Typekit&lt;/a&gt; for cross-browser compatibility and ease-of-use.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘FontShop Now Licensing Web Fonts’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/fontshop-web"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Reuters:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sirius XM Radio Inc. posted its first quarterly profit since its merger and said it expected to add 500,000 new subscribers in 2010 as the recovery in the car market boosts demand for satellite radio.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Looks like they&amp;#8217;re going to make it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Sirius Posts Profit, Sees Big Subscriber Growth’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/sirius"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this is the pessimistic take on the &amp;#8220;What happens to Apple post-Jobs?&amp;#8221; question:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Palm is basically Apple, Jr. And if a bunch of Apple geniuses can&amp;#8217;t kick butt on their own at Palm, how are they going to kick butt without Steve at Apple?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;He has a point, insofar as that Palm &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; staffed with many former Apple employees, and, in terms of design and feel and concept, WebOS is the most Apple-like, by far, of any other software platform in the world. But Frommer&amp;#8217;s logical presumption that Palm&amp;#8217;s former Apple employees are interchangeable with those who are at Apple today is headache-inducing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Worse, with regard to mobile, today&amp;#8217;s Palm &amp;#8212; the Rubinstein-led, stocked with former Apple people, WebOS Palm &amp;#8212; only came into existence &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the iPhone debuted. For the sake of argument we can concede that the team at Palm today is just as talented as the team under Jobs at Apple and it still might not be enough to dig the new Palm out of the hole it started in.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As I stated in my talk at Macworld this month, what Apple will be like post-Jobs is simply unknowable. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Frommer Says Palm&amp;#8217;s Decline &amp;#8216;Shows That Apple Is Screwed Without Steve Jobs&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/steve-jobs"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Pushing the limits of per-post art (and code) direction. Geoffrey Grosenbach explains in detail how it works.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘About PeepCode&amp;#8217;s Blog’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/peepcode-blog"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Smart stuff. (&lt;a href="http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_posts_webcast_of_their_presentation_at_the_goldman_sachs_tech_conf/"&gt;Via MacDailyNews&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Posts Audio From Tim Cook&amp;#8217;s Q&amp;amp;A Session at Goldman Sachs Conference’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/cook-audio"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Very odd, since (a) there doesn&amp;#8217;t seem to be anything even vaguely &amp;#8220;objectionable&amp;#8221; anywhere on the company&amp;#8217;s weblog, and (b) even if there were, what business is it of Citibank&amp;#8217;s?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Fabulis describes itself as a &amp;#8220;network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block and around the world&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Citibank Blocks Bank Account of Startup Fabulis, Citing &amp;#8216;Objectionable Content&amp;#8217; on Company Weblog’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/fabulis"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Not good.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Palm Slashes Guidance, Stock Tanks’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/palm"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Exhibition&amp;#8221; or not, this was a great match. I particularly loved the cohesive branding they established.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Khoi Vinh and Nicholas Felton Comment on Their Layer Tennis Match Last Week’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/vinh-felton"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Four months after debuting as the top-of-the-line Android handset, the Droid is now selling on Amazon for just $50 (with a Verizon contract). Still can&amp;#8217;t upgrade it to Android OS 2.1, either. (&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/counternotions/status/9610547225"&gt;Via Kontra&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Motorola Droid Now Just $50 at Amazon’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/droid-amazon"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Pure web app e-book reader for iPhone and Android. Install it on your iPhone home screen and it acts like a regular app, including the use of local storage for your saved books.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Ibis Reader’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/ibis"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s not in the store yet, but there&amp;#8217;s a new &amp;#8220;Explicit&amp;#8221; category in the form developers use when submitting apps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Oops, maybe not. &lt;a href="http://gizmodo.com/5479497/apple-removes-explicit-option-from-itunes"&gt;Gizmodo is reporting&lt;/a&gt; that the &amp;#8220;Explicit&amp;#8221; category has been removed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘ Apple May Be Adding ‘Explicit’ Section to App Store’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/explicit"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The guys who made the video demonstration of the Flash Player 10.1 beta argue that battery performance isn&amp;#8217;t a problem:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Our own tests show that video can be played for well over 3 hours over Wi-Fi from YouTube in H.264 (Baseline 1.2).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;If you think that sounds good, note that the Nexus One is &lt;a href="http://www.google.com/googlephone/m/hardware_complete_specs.html"&gt;rated for 7 hours of video playback time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Flash Player 10.1 Battery Performance on the Android Nexus One’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/24/flash-battery"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;An animated appraisal from Steven Heller.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/pictograms"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Terrific interview with Jim Reekes, creator of the Mac startup sound. Starts out in Dutch, but the interview is in English. (&lt;a href="http://www.uiandus.com/blog/2010/2/12/creator-of-the-mac-startup-sound.html"&gt;Via Keith Lang&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; One More Thing&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkTwNerh1G8"&gt;complete one-hour interview with Reekes&lt;/a&gt; is now on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Let It Beep&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/reekes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I was there the week after Macworld Expo. Crystals (the high-end shopping mall) is a disaster inside; it feels like a maze. Aria is nice; its casino has an intriguing modern decor. Vdara seemed like a billion-dollar empty tower. CityCenter as a whole strikes me as a fundamentally bad idea &amp;#8212; a massive complex in Vegas that doesn&amp;#8217;t feel one bit like Vegas.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lamster, attending the grand opening for architecture critics:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The absurdity of CityCenter’s urban gesture of separating its buildings now becomes apparent. The PR team has arranged for SUVs to take journalists from the Aria to the Mandarin Oriental for a cocktail party. The buildings are maybe 150 feet from each other.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href="http://kottke.org/10/02/post-metaphor-las-vegas"&gt;Via Kottke&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Mark Lamster on Las Vegas&amp;#8217;s CityCenter’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/lamster-citycenter"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Jeff LaMarche on the Nexus One:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;To make matters worse, the sensors on the Nexus One for the four hardware buttons are not exactly aligned with the silkscreened icons. You have to tap noticeably above the button to get it to register. That was very frustrating for me until someone (from Google nonetheless) pointed out the mis-alignment. Up until then, I consistently had to hit the buttons three or four times to get it to register.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But even worse than that, the home button on the Nexus One is &lt;em&gt;right below the fracking space bar on the portrait keyboard&lt;/em&gt;. Combine that with the not-completely-precise touch screen, and you have a UX disaster. I can&amp;#8217;t tell you how many times I&amp;#8217;ve been typing and ended up leaving my application due to accidentally hitting the home button. Leaving an application mid-sentence is hardly a good user experience.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;He&amp;#8217;s got lots of other observations I agree with, but the above one is, without question, the biggest WTF on the Nexus One. It&amp;#8217;s just bizarre.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Nexus One From an iPhone Developer&amp;#8217;s Perspective’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/nexus-one"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;He had me until the triple-bang to end the thing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘ Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein&amp;#8217;s Letter to Employees’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/rubinstein"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dr. Strangelove&lt;/em&gt; is out on Blu-ray and it&amp;#8217;s magnificent. (Buy it from Amazon and I&amp;#8217;ll get a kickback.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Mandrake, Have You Ever Seen a Commie Drink a Glass of Water? Vodka, That’s What They Drink. Never Water.’’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/strangelove"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;So with this whole thing where &lt;a href="http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apple+sexy+apps&amp;amp;scoring=a&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ned=us&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;sugg=d&amp;amp;as_ldate=2010/01&amp;amp;as_hdate=2010/01&amp;amp;lnav=hist0"&gt;Apple has removed and banned&lt;/a&gt; like 5,000 &amp;#8220;sexy apps&amp;#8221; from the App Store, I think I&amp;#8217;ve figured out the reason why, including why they&amp;#8217;re &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/app-store-sexy-apps"&gt;granting exceptions&lt;/a&gt; to established names like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and Victoria&amp;#8217;s Secret. It&amp;#8217;s about branding. Let me just state right here up front that I don&amp;#8217;t agree with or like how they&amp;#8217;re doing this. I&amp;#8217;m just trying to make sense of it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s easier, though, to first run through what this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve seen a lot of speculation that the exceptions are about money. I.e. that Apple wanted to ban the sexy apps but left the big-name ones in because they don&amp;#8217;t want to lose their 30 percent cut of the money these apps generate. That doesn&amp;#8217;t hold water, though &amp;#8212; a slew of apps that &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been banned were top sellers, established brand names or not. If it were just about revenue, Apple would have left them all in the store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-apples-absurd-double-standard-boobs-skin-and-sex-apps-are-fine-when-big-media-makes-them-2010-2"&gt;Henry Blodget speculates&lt;/a&gt; that the established brand-name exceptions are about setting up deals for iPad apps from the companies behind them. But that&amp;#8217;s just a variation on the &amp;#8220;it&amp;#8217;s about the money&amp;#8221; argument. Again, if Apple&amp;#8217;s interest here was about money, they wouldn&amp;#8217;t be banning any of these apps in the first place. Apple is not going to be hard up for iPad apps and content. If anything, I suspect the problem with iPad apps will be just like that with iPhone apps &amp;#8212; too many of them, not too few.&lt;sup id="fnr1-2010-02-25"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn1-2010-02-25"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Another iPad-related theory &amp;#8212; suggested by several DF readers via email &amp;#8212; is that it&amp;#8217;s about the education market. The idea being that Apple wants to sell iPads to schools and therefore wants anything even remotely objectionable out of the App Store. But institutional iPads will be managed devices, just like &amp;#8220;enterprise&amp;#8221; iPhones are today. Students using a school-owned iPad won&amp;#8217;t be able to install apps from the App Store, so it doesn&amp;#8217;t really matter which apps are for sale.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, if you think about it, it&amp;#8217;s clearly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about banning porno and bikini-clad-semi-porno from the iPhone entirely. &lt;a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/apple-iphone-pornography-ban/"&gt;MG Siegler writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple is going through all this trouble of removing these apps, and creating more work in scanning for the next sexy apps to reject, when built into every iPhone and iPod touch is not one, but two huge entry points for explicit material &amp;#8212; and both are apps made by Apple themselves. The first, I alluded to above: iTunes. There are no shortage of films and TV shows with nudity and sexual content (along with violence and everything else) that are available on iTunes for purchase on the device. The same is true for explicit music.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But the second app is far worse: Safari. Each iPhone and iPod touch has a web browser that is more than capable of accessing any site on the web with a few clicks. This includes sites with hardcore pornography, or anything else a teenage kid can dream up. Apple is going through all this trouble to block sexy apps (which have never contained nudity, by the way, just sexy pictures), when they offer one of their own that makes it much easier to find far more sinister content.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Siegler is correct that MobileSafari is completely open to anything and everything published on the web. But he draws the wrong conclusion. Apple isn&amp;#8217;t futilely trying to ban this sort of content from the iPhone. They&amp;#8217;re just removing it from the App Store. Think about a physical world analogy to the retail Apple Stores. There&amp;#8217;s all sorts of software (and hardware) you can buy and install for Macs that Apple would never sell in their stores.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The purest representation of the Apple brand is Apple&amp;#8217;s own &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/23/cook-goldman"&gt;remarkably small&lt;/a&gt; (for a company of its size) lineup of products. Retail Apple Stores (and Apple&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://store.apple.com/"&gt;web store&lt;/a&gt;) are a slightly expanded representation of its brand &amp;#8212; they sell many third-party products, but they are carefully selected by Apple itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The App Store is looser. The vast majority of the 150,000+ available titles would not be there if Apple were managing the App Store the way they manage their retail stores. It&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;good&lt;/em&gt; that it&amp;#8217;s looser. It almost has to be. (It&amp;#8217;s pretty hard to find people complaining that Apple allows too &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; titles into the App Store.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But, still, Apple sees the App Store as an extension of the Apple brand. That&amp;#8217;s why flat-out pornography has never been and never will be allowed. You can walk into a Barnes and Noble and buy a copy of Maxim, but you won&amp;#8217;t find a copy of Hustler. Not because Hustler wouldn&amp;#8217;t sell, but because selling pornography goes against the Barnes and Noble brand.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think what Apple was getting squeamish about wasn&amp;#8217;t the sexy apps themselves, but the cheesiness that the sexy apps (and their prominence in best selling lists) was bestowing upon the general feel and vibe of the App Store. One thing I wasn&amp;#8217;t aware of before the recent crackdown was the degree to which these apps were seeping into various non-entertainment categories. E.g., like half the &amp;#8220;new&amp;#8221; apps in the &amp;#8220;productivity&amp;#8221; category featured imagery of large-breasted bikini-clad women.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The App Store is never going to be like Apple&amp;#8217;s retail stores, and Apple knows it. Apple&amp;#8217;s retail stores, branding-wise, convey an image sort of like between the Gap and Banana Republic &amp;#8212; friendly premium. The App Store is more Old Navy, or maybe even Target. But these sexy apps were casting the App Store into something junkier, bordering on the skeevy.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What iPhone users choose to access through MobileSafari doesn&amp;#8217;t reflect on Apple. But what is listed in the App Store &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; reflect on Apple. What you see when you peruse the App Store effectively &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the App Store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So what I see as hypocritical about Apple&amp;#8217;s decision here is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about the fact that you can access the same sort of content via MobileSafari, but rather about the exceptions granted to Sports Illustrated, etc. I see &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;: Sports Illustrated, Victoria&amp;#8217;s Secret, and Playboy are not just strong brands but also &lt;em&gt;quality&lt;/em&gt; brands. But who&amp;#8217;s to say some new brand couldn&amp;#8217;t be just as good? The best apps in all sorts of categories across the board in the App Store are frequently from new companies, building new brands. It&amp;#8217;s no more fair for the &amp;#8220;hot chicks in bikinis&amp;#8221; category to be occupied solely by existing major brands like Sports Illustrated/Victoria&amp;#8217;s Secret/Playboy than it would be if the, say, photo manipulation category were occupied solely by Adobe and Corel, or if games were only allowed from companies like EA.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;If Apple&amp;#8217;s going to allow any of these apps, they ought to allow all of them. They should be evaluated by content, not by the names submitting them. If Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t want these apps boogering up the best-seller lists in various categories across the App Store, they should assign them all to a single category. (Tough job: finding a name for that category.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The other thing that bothers me, and ought to bother Apple, is the obvious capriciousness with which these apps were removed. These apps were allowed for about a year and a half. Some developers were prospering by them. And then, boom, they were gone. The reason Apple ought to be concerned about this is that it unsettles &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; developers &amp;#8212; even those whose apps and &lt;em&gt;ideas for future apps&lt;/em&gt; were nowhere along the lines of girls-in-bikinis. What developers see here isn&amp;#8217;t Apple managing its own brand. What developers see is that the App Store is a shaky foundation upon which to build a business. One day you&amp;#8217;re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren&amp;#8217;t being built because developers don&amp;#8217;t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple sees the App Store as an aspect of its brand. Developers see the App Store as the entirety of the Cocoa Touch platform. This is a significant conflict. Developers, if rejected from the App Store, can freely deliver whatever content they choose through MobileSafari &amp;#8212; but you can&amp;#8217;t reuse compiled Cocoa Touch apps that way. The work invested in a native app can only be recouped through the App Store.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s entrepreneurism to be willing to take your chances in the market. It&amp;#8217;s healthy skepticism to worry about being locked out of the market after you&amp;#8217;ve already invested heavily in building your product.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="footnotes"&gt; &lt;hr /&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li id="fn1-2010-02-25"&gt; &lt;p&gt;The cynical take on these exceptions, if you don&amp;#8217;t buy my branding argument, is that Apple might have decided not to antagonize those companies with large, talented, corporate legal departments.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr1-2010-02-25" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Dan Frakes:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;As usual, there were also a number of off-beat comments and questions, ranging from suggestions that Apple invest in Tesla Motors (Jobs: “We were thinking of a toga party, actually”) [&amp;#8230;]&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Frakes on Apple&amp;#8217;s Shareholders Meeting’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/25/frakes-shareholders"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Merlin Mann:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This reeks of the same bush-league decision-making that hobbled Hulu, gets music fans sued, and keeps high-quality content locked in a tower like an aging virgin &amp;#8212; too special to be manhandled by the riff-raff who are reluctant to pony up the lavish dowry that was the fashion fifty years earlier.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The good news: &lt;a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/02/yes-we-know-that-the-rss-feeds-are-broken/36782/"&gt;it&amp;#8217;s a bug in The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s updated CMS&lt;/a&gt; &amp;#8212; full-content feeds are coming back. But so while Merlin&amp;#8217;s arguments don&amp;#8217;t apply to The Atlantic in particular, they stand as a fine essay on the turning point traditional paper-and-ink publications are facing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Merlin Mann on The Atlantic&amp;#8217;s Dropping of Full-Content RSS Feeds’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/merlin-atlantic"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I question whether the survey group is representative of the platforms as a whole, but some of the numbers are striking. Android skews heavily male, for one thing. But by far the most striking stat in these results is the number for 17-and-under users:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;iPhone: 13%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;iPod Touch: 65%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Android: 7%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;WebOS: 2%&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;p&gt;For the phones, 17-or-younger is the smallest demographic. For the iPod Touch, on the other hand, it is by far the largest. More evidence that the iPod Touch is the strongest competitive asset for iPhone OS. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘iPhone, Android, and WebOS Demographics Via AdMob Survey’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/demographics"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Thank goodness AppleInsider is here to bring me wisdom such as this, from analyst Kathryn Huberty:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;We expect Apple to launch new iPhones in June that offer both a lower total cost of ownership and new functionality, potentially including gesture-based technology.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Huberty, of course, is the analyst &lt;a href="http://blog.asymco.com/2010/02/26/kathryn-huberty-predicts-apple-performance/"&gt;who 10 months ago set a target for Apple&amp;#8217;s April 2010 stock price at $105&lt;/a&gt;. As of Friday, it was over $204. I&amp;#8217;m sure investors who listened to her advice then have a certain gesture for her.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Deep Insight Into Apple From Morgan Stanley Analyst Kathryn Huberty’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/huberty"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The Macalope:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;So far, 2010 has been dominated by non-stop iPad speculation and Macworld Expo, but it’s time to get back to basics: jerks!&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘They&amp;#8217;re All Out of You’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/28/macalope-jerks"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Brent Simmons:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This isn’t about being a hardcore low-level developer or some crap like that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://inessential.com/2010/02/26/core_data_post_follow-up_notes"&gt;Good follow-up&lt;/a&gt; too.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Brent Simmons on Switching Away From Core Data to Direct SQLite’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/brent-sqlite"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;My thanks to The Little App Factory for sponsoring this week&amp;#8217;s DF RSS feed to promote Rivet. Rivet lets you stream your movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your Xbox 360 or PS3. It integrates with iTunes and iPhoto (and Aperture); changes and additions on your Mac are instantly visible on your console.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;This week only, DF readers can save 25 percent with coupon code &amp;#8220;DARINGFIRE2010&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Rivet’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/26/rivet"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I love this whole unfolding future-of-Flash saga because it&amp;#8217;s a wonderful mix of politics and technology. It&amp;#8217;s complex and multivariate, but not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; complex to get a handle on the basic gist. It occurred to me this week, after both reading and writing quite a bit regarding Flash Player&amp;#8217;s performance issues, that the whole performance angle is a distraction from the fundamental issues at hand.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/01/z"&gt;linked&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href="http://www.zeldman.com/2010/02/01/flash-ipad-standards/"&gt;this piece by Jeffrey Zeldman&lt;/a&gt; three weeks ago, but it&amp;#8217;s worth a re-link. His first paragraph nails it:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to &lt;em&gt;build the semantic HTML layer first&lt;/em&gt;. Additional &lt;a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/semanticflash/"&gt;layers of Flash UX&lt;/a&gt; can then be optionally added in, just as, in proper, accessible, standards-based development, &lt;a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/behavioralseparation"&gt;JavaScript UX enhancements&lt;/a&gt; are added only after we verify that the site works without them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I.e. if you think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you can no longer build a Flash-dependent web site. (And if you &lt;em&gt;don&amp;#8217;t&lt;/em&gt; think people using iPhone OS devices are an important segment of your intended audience, you&amp;#8217;re probably wrong.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Flash&amp;#8217;s performance problems on Mac OS X and mobile devices are very much real. (As of today, note that there still is no shipping version of the full Flash Player for any major mobile platform.) And I do think these performance issues are a factor in Apple&amp;#8217;s decision not to include it in iPhone OS. But I believe the larger issue goes beyond performance. Apple sees the web as a platform based on open standards. Flash isn&amp;#8217;t part of that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So at the moment, Flash&amp;#8217;s performance issues provide Apple with a good apolitical explanation for why Flash Player isn&amp;#8217;t included with iPhone OS. It&amp;#8217;s a way for Apple to argue that they &lt;em&gt;can&amp;#8217;t&lt;/em&gt; rather than that they &lt;em&gt;won&amp;#8217;t&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yes, I&amp;#8217;m skeptical about how Flash Player is going to perform on Android and WebOS devices. I hope I&amp;#8217;m wrong though. If Adobe&amp;#8217;s able to squeeze acceptable performance out of Flash Player 10.1 on these (relatively) low-power ARM devices, then it&amp;#8217;s very likely that Flash Player 10.1 for Mac OS X is going to be much improved as well. (In the same way the constraints imposed on iPhone OS have been great for Mac OS X &amp;#8212; performance tweaks to components like WebKit (and especially JavaScriptCore) made to get MobileSafari running as fast as possible on low-power iPhones have resulted in fantastic performance improvements to WebKit on high-power Macs.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#8217;s what I mean about Flash Player&amp;#8217;s performance being a distraction from the underlying story: Even if Adobe solves Flash&amp;#8217;s performance problems, I still doubt Apple will want to include it in iPhone OS.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It boils down to control. I&amp;#8217;ve written several times that I believe Apple controls the entire source code to iPhone OS. (No one has disputed that.) There&amp;#8217;s no bug Apple can&amp;#8217;t try to fix on their own. No performance problem they can&amp;#8217;t try to tackle. No one they need to wait for. That&amp;#8217;s just not true for Mac OS X, where a component like Flash Player is controlled by Adobe.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I know there are some people who see Apple taking a stand against Flash and &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/davewiner/status/9664056169"&gt;worry&lt;/a&gt; that Apple may someday take a stand against the web itself. One thing that everyone who&amp;#8217;s paying attention can agree on is that Apple greatly values control. That&amp;#8217;s indisputable, regardless whether you consider it a virtue or vice. So I think the worriers see that the web is beyond anyone&amp;#8217;s control and conclude that Apple sees it as a threat.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I say what Apple cares about controlling is the &lt;em&gt;implementation&lt;/em&gt;. That&amp;#8217;s why they started the WebKit project. That&amp;#8217;s why Apple employees from the WebKit team are leaders and major contributors of the HTML5 standards drive. The bottom line for Apple, at the executive level, is selling devices. It may well be true that Steve Jobs doesn&amp;#8217;t really give a shit about the web in and of itself. It&amp;#8217;s just good business for Apple to control a best-of-breed web rendering engine. If Apple controls its own implementation, then no matter how popular the web gets as a platform, Apple will prosper so long as its implementation is superior. (Needless to say, Apple is &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/"&gt;quite confident&lt;/a&gt; in this regard.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The weird thing about a completely open platform based on open standards is that while no single vendor, such as Apple, can control the content or the standards, it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; control its implementation. (And it can &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; the content and the standards.) That&amp;#8217;s all they need.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Likewise with Google&amp;#8217;s interest in the open web and HTML5. It&amp;#8217;s reasonable to be cynical and believe that Google is concerned only with making money, not with the open web simply for virtue&amp;#8217;s sake. So long as the web is open, Google&amp;#8217;s success rests within its own control. And in the same way Apple is confident in its ability to deliver devices with best-of-breed browsing experiences, Google is confident in its ability to provide best-of-breed search results and relevant ads. In short, Google and Apple have found different ways to bet &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; the web, rather than &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The best counter-argument is perhaps that, given Apple&amp;#8217;s desire for control, they&amp;#8217;re always going to prefer their wholly owned proprietary platforms &amp;#8212; native iPhone and Mac apps &amp;#8212; over the web, and will eventually come to see the web as a threat. I don&amp;#8217;t think Apple sees it that way, though. There is always going to be a lowest common denominator platform. That used to be Windows. Now it&amp;#8217;s the web. Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t build lowest common denominator platforms. Before, when Windows was the LCD, Apple was in a hard place because they were locked out of that platform: their platform was at odds with it. Now, with the web as the LCD, Apple has it both ways: their platforms gracefully coexist with it. Apple isn&amp;#8217;t a web company, but the web might be the best thing that ever happened to them.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;From Apple&amp;#8217;s perspective, when it comes to software platforms, &lt;em&gt;theirs&lt;/em&gt; is best (Cocoa/Cocoa Touch), because they have complete control. &lt;em&gt;Everyone&amp;#8217;s&lt;/em&gt; is good (the web), because Apple has control over their own implementation and can influence the future direction of the standards. What Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t want is &lt;em&gt;someone else&amp;#8217;s&lt;/em&gt; proprietary platform, where they have no control at all. That&amp;#8217;s what Flash is.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;ve said this &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus"&gt;before&lt;/a&gt; and will say it again. There&amp;#8217;s only one path for Flash Player to make its way to iPhone OS:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;It appears first on other competing mobile platforms.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;It works well on those platforms.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;Its presence and popularity on those competing platforms shifts consumer demand and adversely affects iPhone OS device sales.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;p&gt;#1 will happen. Regarding #2, I&amp;#8217;m skeptical, but Adobe has smart engineers and their back is to the wall. #3, though, would require a major shift in momentum.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

Filed under: Podcasting, TUAW Business

Sunday night means it's time once again for a TUAW talkcast, in which your favorite TUAW bloggers and readers all get together over on Talkshoe and chat out the biggest Apple happenings of the past week. This week, we'll be talking about that mystery key on the iPad keyboard and what it might be for, Apple's "sex apps" issues, tips for switchers (and why they're so popular), and that file that could very well be the first list of books on the iPad.

We'll also be chatting live with you -- you can call up during the show, and while you're listening on your phone, you can hit *-8 to chat live with us on the air (which is why we call it a "talkcast" rather than a podcast, don'tcha know). So if you find yourself coming down a little hard after the Olympics this evening, jump on in to our chat and we'll cheer you right back up.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

TUAWTUAW Talkcast live tonight at 10pm Eastern originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Cult of Mac, Apple

With TUAW's Your First Apple series, we let you get a glimpse of our own histories with the Mac. My own history with Apple's computers has been a bit convoluted. The first Apple computer, in fact the first computer of any kind I remember using, was an Apple II+. I was in kindergarten in Saudi Arabia at the time, so I don't really remember much about those early experiences. Like many people of my generation, when I returned to the US I went to schools that had computer labs crammed full of Apple IIe computers. Of course, the only programs that were ever run on my elementary school's Apples were marginally "educational" games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Odell Lake, and the massively popular Oregon Trail. Meanwhile, my family had a KayPro PC at home, which meant my dad had to teach an eight-year-old kid how to navigate through the amber-lettered jungles of DOS -- something I'm glad I'll never have to do with my own kids.

The Apple IIe was the only computer I used in school through 1990. I spent most of seventh grade cooking up little text-based adventure games in BASIC, and I even learned some rudimentary drawing and audio programming, all of which I forgot long ago. In mid-1990, the school revamped our computer lab with brand-new Macintosh Classics: the first Mac I ever used, the first machine I used that had a hard drive, and the first time I ever used a GUI to interact with a computer. Oddly enough, despite the huge leap in capabilities the Mac Classic had over the Apple IIe, we spent half of eighth grade using the Mac to learn how to type. I guess I should be thankful I learned to touch-type way back then, but spending several months on typing tutor software was a hard sell after spending the previous year doing actual programming.

After that first year with the Mac, my experiences with Apple's computers went through some rollercoaster-like ups and downs. Click "read more" to find out why.

Some time in the early 90's, my dad dumped his KayPro for a custom-built, unbranded, 386-based PC running Windows 3.11, which I inherited from him after he upgraded yet again. It was the first computer I had all to myself. After learning my way around the Mac's interface, learning Windows 3.11 took all of five minutes. The PC also had color graphics, which was a definite improvement over the black-and-white Mac Classics at school. I didn't get much actual work done on the PC, though, because nothing I produced on it was compatible with my high school's Macs; I mostly used the PC for games.

My high school actually had two computer labs: one full of state-of-the-art Macs for basic computer training and programming, and one full of ancient, DOS-running IBM PCs used for business-related classes. I spent ninth and tenth grade learning how to program in HyperCard, which I used to create a couple of graphic adventure games complete with an X-Y navigation system that took quite a while to code properly. One program I developed in tenth grade on the Mac LC III was an Aliens vs. Predator adventure game, with graphics taken straight from the Dark Horse comic series and audio from both the Aliens and Predator films. I also created a HyperCard-based trojan to mess with the other kids in the lab. It was basically just a HyperCard stack that, once launched, would auto-generate new cards until the RAM filled up and the Mac crashed. High school was a high point in my experiences with Macs, but for the rest of the 90s and the first few years of the 2000s, it was all downhill.

Once I got out of high school, my long relationship with the Mac went on an extended hiatus. After joining the Navy in 1995 I hardly used computers of any kind for several years, to say nothing of Macs or the Internet. For almost four years I barely touched a PC for anything other than playing video games. Macs didn't register on my radar at all, and the few times I came across one, I had the same reaction that a lot of today's Mac haters still have: "For as much as they're charging, I can't even get any decent games for this thing?"

In late 1999 I finally started using the internet on a regular basis via a 56k dialup connection through my roommate's ancient and thoroughly crappy Performa. I don't know which model Performa it was or even what OS it was using -- it was either OS 8 or System 7 -- but I was not impressed with that machine at all. When my roommate offered to give me that Mac in exchange for me paying his part of the rent for a couple months, I turned him down, because I hated almost everything about that Performa. When I moved in with my girlfriend of the time, she had two computers: some anonymous box from HP running Windows 98, and an iMac with OS 9. Since the iMac didn't have any games for it, wasn't compatible with our cable modem, and had that horrible piece of garbage hockey puck mouse, I wouldn't go near the thing. I preferentially veered toward the HP machine for everything I did.

From mid-2000 to early 2003 I once again barely even saw or used a Mac except for the handful of times I visited a Mac zealot friend of mine who lived in Seattle. I inherited yet another ancient computer from another friend of mine for my home use, one even older and less capable than the Performa: some Gateway box running Windows 95. Unable to even hook that machine up to the internet or run 3D games of any kind, the Gateway saw little use for the two years I had it.

After almost ten years of using computers solely for internet access and the occasional bit of gaming, I'd become sort of a luddite. Beyond basic word processing and web browsing, I really had no clue how to use a computer anymore. I ended up becoming a Mac switcher in early 2003, completely against my will, when I moved in with my wife. She had a dual 1GHz G4 Power Mac running OS X, and for the first couple of months using it, I had no idea what I was doing. I think my ignorance showed through enough that my wife got paranoid of letting me use her Mac at all. I eventually got the hang of it, but it was a painful process; I insisted on using Internet Explorer, stayed well clear of OS updates, and didn't even attempt to do anything out of the ordinary with her Mac.

It was only after buying a used PowerBook G3 off of eBay for $200 that I really started figuring the Mac out. In the process of upgrading the processor to a G4, upping the RAM, swapping out the hard drive, and hacking the thing to run OS X Panther and Tiger (the model of PowerBook I bought was supposed to max out at Jaguar), I quickly gained an appreciation for the ins and outs of OS X. In the process, I reached the point where I flat-out refused to use Windows unless I absolutely had to for some reason. Within the space of a year, I also went from being completely ignorant about computers to being free tech support for all my friends; and for the few of them still using Windows, my first bit of tech advice is almost always to stop using Windows. OS X may or may not be inherently "better" than Windows, but over the past several years I've figured out that I only get the urge to throw my Mac out the window once or twice a month versus once every five minutes with the average Windows box.

My wife upgraded to a MacBook in 2007, so I inherited her Power Mac -- just in time, as it turned out, because even after all its upgrades, my PowerBook was definitely showing its age, particularly in the way it liked to chew through hard drives. In February of 2008 I bought the 17" MacBook Pro I'm still using today -- the first brand-new computer I've ever owned.

It's been a long, weird ride -- BASIC programming, typing tutors, HyperCard programming, then close to ten years of neo-Ludditism -- to where I am now, in a house full of Apple-branded gadgets, most of which would have sounded like science fiction when I sat down in front of a Mac Classic for the first time twenty years ago.

TUAWMy on-again, off-again Apple relationship originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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reporter writes "Since 2006, Apple has regularly audited its manufacturing partners to ensure that they conform to Apple's Supplier Code of Conduct (ASCC), which essentially codifies Western ethical standards with regard to the environment, labor, business conduct, etc. Core violations of ASCC 'include abuse, underage employment, involuntary labor, falsification of audit materials, threats to worker safety, intimidation or retaliation against workers in the audit and serious threats to the environment. Apple said it requires facilities it has found to have a core violation to address the situation immediately and institute a system that insures compliance. Additionally, the facility is placed on probation and later re-audited.' Apple checks 102 facilities, most of which are located in Asia, and these facilities employ 133,000 workers. The most recent audit of Apple's partners revealed 17 violations of ASCC. The violations include hiring workers who were as young as 15 years of age, incorrectly disposing of hazardous waste, and falsifying records. In Apple's recently released Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report (PDF), they condemned the violations and threatened to terminate their business with facilities that did not change their ways."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Odds and ends, TUAW Business

The Reader's View is our weekly roundup of some of the most upbeat, thoughtful, or just plain good comments that have been published by TUAW readers. This week, we still have some post-Macworld Expo 2010 comments coming in, as well as discussion of several posts that attracted positive comments this week.

The first comment, from Ed P, was added to David Winograd's coverage of his interview with Roland Saekow of BearExtender. It appears that Ed was actually at Macworld watching the interview being done: "Hey, I was watching this while ya'll were broadcasting! Macworld was Haute! Really looking forward to next year!"

We are too, Ed! Next, David's interview of Mitch Waite, developer of iBird Pro for iPhone, generated some very positive words about the app from aptly-named reader nature: "iBird is one of the best apps I have ever found. The comments about the illustrations not being correct is obviously from a perfectionist who does not appreciate what a leap forward this app is. The average person does not need perfect drawings, they need great functionality and good photos and illustrations. iBird has those and a lot more. Like its amazing search engine that has taught me how to identify birds so that my life list is now at 222 in less than 3 months. It's amazing to me how the critics come out and jump all over good products rather than appreciate what has been done."

Erica Sadun's insight is always technically on target and sometimes controversial. Her recent post "TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS," created its fair share of comments. One, from reader frank l, seemed to capture the essence of what what a future OS should be: "Extrapolation into the future improves with more data points. We may have further insights after the iPad and its successors are more familiar to us.

As I see it, the future of operating systems can be described in a single word, 'adaptive.' The idea is that devices will adapt to users, uses and available resources and do so in a relatively seamless fashion. In this Brave New World, there will be less for end users to learn as the sophistication of their use grows.

The OS will have a core with modules being added and jettisoned as circumstances change. The Adaptive OS."

TUAW's Michael Jones has a wonderful way of explaining things to Mac users. In his post "Mac 101: Navigating OS X with your keyboard," he spoke to Mac owners new and old about how to use your Mac without a mouse. Reader Robert gave us a tip on two useful keyboard shortcuts he uses: "I've had to work with 'mouseless Macs' every so often at the university computer labs. Here's some useful ones:

Access the Menu Bar: Control-F2
Access the Dock: Control-F3

Note that if your keyboard has an fn key, you'll need to use that in conjunction with the above key commands, or else they won't work. Then you can use the arrow keys and the return key or space bar to navigate and select menu and dock items."

Thanks for that information, Robert! Michael will be publishing a followup to that post some time soon. Next, a number of TUAW regulars made comments on my post "TUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf." Many readers liked VanillaSurf, but couldn't get it to import bookmarks. Reader Jim figured out how to activate this feature in the app: "I finally got it to work the bookmark importing to work. I removed the profile in Firefox [v3.6] and then relaunched it so that it lets me import my Safari bookmarks [Safari is my default browser and has the latest bookmarks] Then exported the bookmarks from Firefox and tried the sync again and it worked! yay!"

Finally, it's always fun when a reader like doelcm can give the TUAW bloggers a good laugh. He responded to our post "Rumor: UK iPad pricing" with this: "Dear TUAW. Could you please put the word "rumor" (or "rumour" in this case) in the title when you're posting unsubstantiated information.

Oh, wait....never mind."

We'll be back with another edition of The Reader's View next Saturday here on TUAW. Until then, keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

Original post photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabine01/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

TUAWThe Reader's View: Best of your feedback, comments and opinions originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple Corporate, Apple Financial

Thursday, Briefings.com, CNBC and a passel of other market analysts predicted that a 4 for 1 stock split would be announced at the Apple Shareholder Meeting. This rumor moved the market, but there are conflicting opinions to why. First, for the uninitiated, a stock split is a zero sum game. One interpretation is that a firm considers its stock too highly priced for the average consumer and decides to split. For example, let's say that Apple is trading for $200 and you have one share. If a 4 for 1 stock split takes place, you will wind up 4 shares, instead of 1, but each share will be valued at $50. Did you gain or lose any money? No. It's all on paper. However, to those not familiar with the Buttonwood tree, and that's a lot of us, it sounds like 'quick buy Apple and you'll be getting 4 times as much'. The case for this sort of stupidity is well made by Barrons.

Stock splits are nothing new to AAPL. They've split 2 for 1 three time in the past, in June 1987, June 2000 and February 2005.

There are two general schools of thought on the reason behind stock splits, and they are total opposites. The first theory is that a company will split a stock if it is in trouble to allow lower dollar investors to buy their shares at half the price and thus incur less risk. The other school of thought is that a good company realizes their stock is just too expensive for the small trader who has some cash on the sidelines. It is meant to give the small guy an easier way to buy some stock without needing to commit the $200 for a share. Both sides have their points and, to an extent, both points are based on smoke and mirrors since they do not effect the worth of the company or the aggregate value of the stock by one penny.
Unless I read the word 'drop' wrong, it seems to me that the stock was down, and then the rumor came in and the stock shot up. There was no word of a split at the shareholder meeting, but as a long term AAPL watcher, I wouldn't count out a split happening in the near future. However that's just me.

Another story that seems to be gaining traction, for no good reason that I can surmise, is that Apple will declare a dividend of $33.00 per share, returning 16.66% to investors. Doing so would mean relinquishing 75% of its moneybags this year while taxes on dividends and passive income are low. It would also take Apple's walking around money from from $40 billion to $10 billion. I really wonder where this one got started since Apple hasn't declared a dividend since 1995, and playing Scrooge McDuck seems to keep Steve happy. Although Apple isn't known for buying a lot of companies scatter-shot, it's quite nice to be able to buy what you want when the right opportunity presents itself without worrying about nasty things like financing. And I haven't heard much, if any, grousing directed at Apple not forking over the dividends. Tell me if I'm wrong, but this seems like a non-story.

With all these stories whirling about, Apple went up $5.97 to close at $202.86 on Thursday. What do you make of this? Reading all the interpretations of Thurday's action makes my brain hurt.

The bottom line is: nothing happened.

Disclaimer: I own some Apple stock and all the opinions are my own.

TUAWNo Apple stock split...for now. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/lgwp7.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Microsoft tonight showed off the first production device running Windows Phone 7. Revealed during a taping of the Engadget Show, the early prototype is an LG-made QWERTY slider that bears a strong resemblance to the eXpo. Not much is known about the device itself besides its 5-megapixel camera, but it will have to meet Microsoft's chassis guidelines, which includes the three-button interface, a fast processor and an 800x480 or larger touchscreen....

Filed under: Surveys and Polls, iPhone, iPad

The end of this week has brought a little flurry of information about the differences between iPhone and Android users. First up, Admob has released the results of a survey that says the iPhone is twice as popular as comparable smartphones in both young and old demographics. Unfortunately, we can only guess as to why (it would be a little more interesting if either age showed a preference for one phone over another), but it seems the iPhone has yet another remarkable trait: appealing to users of all ages. No wonder Apple is jumping in on the iPad -- they really do have a pre-release audience.

But they can't sit on their laurels for too long -- according to a report at Myxer's Boombox (via Fortune), the Android OS is picking up the pace, especially in what city folk call the "flyover states." Android use of the program has actually surpassed iPhone users in Montana, the Dakotas, and Arizona and New Mexico, and the numbers are close in the Midwest, including Kansas and Missouri. That's interesting -- that could have something to do with the distribution of Apple retail stores, or maybe just more urban center dwellers are drawn to the iPhone. DC seems to be the exception, as Virginia and Maryland are much more Android, but otherwise, if you're in a state with a big population center, odds are that you own an iPhone. Fascinating.

TUAWiPhone users come in all ages but probably live near a big city originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Accessories, ipod shuffle

I'm in Chicago right now visiting some of my friends. Yesterday we decided to go to my old workplace, the Art Institute of Chicago, which has one of the best collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the world. Imagine my surprise when I found myself staring at a first-generation iPod shuffle accessory.

Some of you may remember this accessory from back in the day when Apple made the first shuffle that looked like a white stick of Wrigley's gum. The accessory/piece of art is called iBelieve and is basically a T-shaped cap that turns your first-gen iPod shuffle into a Cross you can wear around you neck.

The plaque next to the artwork reads:

Scott Wilson
American, born 1969

iBelieve, 2006
iPod shuffle, plastic, and fabric
(including replacement cap)

Before relocating to Chicago in 2006 to set up his own studio, industrial designer Scott Wilson was a lead designer at Nike and IDEO. His innovative projects run the gamut from furniture to household products to high-performance sports equipment. iBelieve is part of a series of self-produced works and was inspired by the current popularity of the iPod. The conceptual design consists of a replacement cap, or what Wilson refers to as a "divine accessory," for the iPod shuffle. When snapped onto a shuffle, the attachment creates a cruciform shape, which enables consumers to profess their devotion to this omnipresent electronic device. Conceived as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on consumer culture, Wilson took advantage of viral marketing techniques and posted the design to a blog, which received 250,000 hits in one day as a result.

I've always known about the various online Apple museums, but who could have imagined that a cap for one of Apple's worst-designed iPods would some day be hanging in the same museum with the likes of Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks?

TUAWiPod accessory turns up in fine art museum originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: OS, Odds and ends, Internet, Leopard

Research released today indicates that in North America, Apple's Mac OS X is gaining traction, while the Windows share of the OS market is shrinking ever so slightly. That's the report from Quantcast, a company that measures and analyzes web traffic. They say that the market share for Mac OS X is up 7% from December to January. Microsoft held steady for the last 3 months of 2009 with the release of Windows 7, but started a slow decline again in January.

According to Quantcast, Apple has a 10.9% North American share as of January, while Windows has 86.8%. An interesting note is that the largest group of users is on Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, while Windows XP dominates on the Microsoft side. Apple's relative share in North America is up 29.4 % in a year, while Windows share is down 3.8%.

These figures measure web consumption, so if you're not web connected your OS choice doesn't count. Quantcast measures ad supported sites, so huge traffic sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others don't supply statistics.

TUAWQuantcast: Apple share of OS growing while Microsoft shrinks slightly originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Good news for fans of good games: the terrific DS courtroom simulator (which, trust me, sounds much less fun than it actually is) Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney is coming to the iPhone, and Slide to Play has posted some hands-on video. The game takes the two DS screens and stacks them on top of each other rather than converting the game into a landscape version, so it's basically a straight port of the DS game. It'd be interesting to see a more iPhone-specific version of the game (maybe something that uses the camera or the accelerometer to show off evidence in the courtroom), but we'll take just the port, too -- if you haven't played any of the Phoenix Wright games but enjoy a good adventure yarn, you're in for a treat. The game should be out "soon."

Hexen II is on its way to the iPhone as well, and Touch Arcade has a few screens and video of that one. I was much more of a Quake fan, but Hexen, with its medieval setting and RPG elements placed in the same game engine, had its share of followers back in the day, too. Unfortunately, Vimov doesn't yet have the rights to Hexen II -- they're just working with an open-sourced version of the engine. To actually release the data on the App Store, they'll need to make a deal with Activision, so we'll have to wait and see if that can happen before you can start hacking and slashing through the world of the Serpent Riders again.

TUAWPhoenix Wright, Hexen II coming to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Retail, Odds and ends, Apple

While this may sound like an odd pastime, for some Olympic fans pin collecting is a huge deal. The official Vancouver 2010 website store lists 459 different pins for collecting and trading with others, but those aren't all of the pins that fans will find. Often, local businesses or organizations will make their own pins to give away or sell, and at these Winter Games, Apple joined in on the fun.

TUAW reader Alan Waite was in Vancouver earlier in the week to attend the Games and visited the Apple Store at Pacific Centre. Much to his surprise, Apple was giving away a limited edition set of pins (see photo above) to store visitors to commemorate the event. Very classy, Apple! Waite noted that the Apple Store at Oakridge Centre had a special red iPod nano pin with the Canadian maple leaf on the screen.

Custom pins like these aren't as common as the mass-market versions sold by the official Olympics website, so Alan not only has cool memorabilia from the 2010 Winter Games, but a relatively rare piece of swag as well.

TUAWApple gives Vancouver Olympic visitors a rare treasure originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Humor, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Apple

Happy weekend! Google may have won some hearts with its Super Bowl ad a little while back, but we all know that Apple is the king of advertising when it comes to technology, so YouTuber allenmonroeiii decided to make a little parody of the Google ad and promote the Mac instead.

Strangely, it actually works -- while the audio is straight from the Google ad (which tells the story of a guy who finds love in Paris by searching on Google), the music serves just as well to tell the story of someone frustrated by a Windows PC purchase. No, this probably won't sell any computers (it's for us Mac heads to laugh at, considering that it was made in about an hour), but go ahead and enjoy it for what it is, and enjoy your weekend.

TUAWFound Footage: Google's ad, Mac style originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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